A lot of people hate that film, but I liked it. It got me in to the books, and I think it's a fine scifi film.. though I wouldn't mention it in the same breath as 2001.
Try "alternative edition redux" -a fan recut the thing and made ... a really good movie out of it. Unlike the official cuts, you don't need to have read the book first.
I know I am worth ~50$ a year to the Ad business. I'll gladly pay $60 a year for access to content. That $60 gets redistributed to content providers based on the share of my viewership they get.
Basically, cut the middle man (ad companies in this case).
How can you know that? I remember back in high school I made a few flash games, that was the only time I ever got a few ECPM mesure of every countries, and I could get up to 10$ per 1000 views from the US. It did include video ads though.
Let stay conservative and say 3$ per 1000 views. I heard of plenty of people that make more and that's including what Google take out of it. There's no way you only see 20 000 pages a year. It's at least 5-6 times that amount of page.
Ads are also amazing by the fact that they still pay even though you are underage and can't get a credit card. My passion of software engineering wouldn't have been fulfilled if it wasn't from all the free resource. I learned from Site du Zéro, I was there pretty early when they started, I've seen the website owner going from nothing to building an amazing company. Now they no longer depends on ads, so that's good, but that's only because me seeing their ads at the being was enough for them to work full time on it.
20000 pages a year comes to 54 a day every single day. 5-6 times that amount would be 250-300 pages a day. I don’t think many people read that much.
Also note that this is in the context of the typically more valuable video ads. On eg YouTube if you say 1 ad per 10 minutes it would take 9 hours of video watching per day to rack up 54 ads.
I don’t know what rate of ads one can expect from a mobile game but maybe it would be more. I think you would still likely need several hours to get so many. And presumably you want to play less if there are more frequent ads.
Anyone on Hacker News read much more than 250-300 pages a day. Just casually browsing on Hacker News would give a few dozens (multiple pages, looking at comments, going to the actual page). Any software engineer will look at reference on the web. I regularly reach 1000 pages a day myself at works (verified using a Chrome extension) and it doesn't take into account my usage over my phone.
> On eg YouTube if you say 1 ad per 10 minutes it would take 9 hours of video watching per day to rack up 54 ads.
Video ads pay much more, as I said, they can go up to 10$ for 1000 views and that's not included the ad provider part.
And you only need to get everyone on the planet who wants to sell content to participate in the network and agree to standardized compensation. It's the same type of issue as with blockchain for supply chains, etc. Everyone needs to participate or it doesn't really work. It can work--it's been reasonably well worked out in music--but that's arguably a more standardized product.
The thing is someone in our community is probably worth $500 a year to the ad business whereas 90% of people are worth nothing. Would you be willing to pay $600 a year to access content, what happens to the other 90% who couldn't afford that. What media would they be condemned to consume.
If you really want to be socially inclusive, raise taxes on those that can afford to pay (wealthy pensioners are massively undertaxed in the UK for instance), and distribute it as "consumer tokens", or cash, that people can spend on consuming crap.
I actually doubt someone in our community is worth that much. If anything, we're worth less than non-tech-savvy people because we see through the bullshit (when we don't outright block it) where as they don't.
A friend of mine recently fell prey to a scam ad on Facebook and they got some money off her. I have yet to buy anything from an online ad in my entire life; so she is actually a much better investment than I am in terms of ad spend.
> because we see through the bullshit (when we don't outright block it) where as they don't.
Sounds like the "marketing doesn't work on me cuz I'm so smart" fallacy, which usually means you're getting hacked by a different type of marketing.
Getting the eyes of wealthy target demographic -- and IT/CS/Dev/STEM folks qualifies -- is definitely worth $$$, the only question is if it's $500 or lower (or higher?). I used to have clients who existed to target the hyper-wealthy, and they made cash hand over fist schlepping details about those folks.
$500 bucks for semi-personalized deets about FAANG devs making $300k+ makes sense, and you can find those people on HN for sure.
My preferred marketing vulnerability is Consumer Reports- or Wirecutter-style. They're making money off marketing things to me, but they're not dependent on any particular brand, so I can feel reasonably confident that I'll be happy with the results.
It's $5/mo even for the limited list of sites participating (already $60/mo). I suppose removing ads everywhere by paying web sites the amount advertisers from all networks pay them would cost several times as much.
It's a sensible way of having content creators get paid, but I'm not particularly comfortable with Google watching what websites I visit, which is necessary so they can dole out the cash.
What's worked for me is a combination of aggressive ad-and-tracker-blocking and subscribing to the print versions of content I enjoy.
Echoing other comments, Tidyverse is somewhat more coherent (aided significantly by magrittr's %>% operator). Beginners might get tripped up by Non-Standard Evaluation (NSE), which is a little unintuitive, but there are packages to help with that.
The Pandas's API is a generalized solution to complicated, variegated use cases and its syntax reflects that (it was also hemmed by strictures of Python). There are several indexing methods, several ways to slice, several ways to do apply's, all of which behave slightly differently. Even expert Pandas users have trouble remembering the syntax for all of these, so they typically have a Pandas API browser window open or a printed cheat sheet pasted on some corkboard. Pandas definitely takes longer to get used to than Tidyverse but the payoff is that you get to use Python, which is a somewhat "deeper" language than R.
R is great for interactive work, and for data munging jobs that don't interact too much with non-R libraries. However Python is sinply more versatile end-to-end.
I used to start my interactive analysis in R and port to Python for production, but these days I start in Python straight away so there's no impedance mismatch. I've personally found that writing production code in Python (and by extension Pandas) to be much more pleasant than in R, even with Tidyverse.
The Tidyverse is more coherent and is generally bigger than what’s just in Pandas (R’s Tidyverse; I haven’t used the Python port).
If you already have a good grasp of Python, sure why not learn Pandas too? In my case, I’m reasonably ambidextrous in Python and R but find myself not reaching for Python unless there are colleague / deployment considerations that remove R as an option. The reason? R’s Tidyverse is pretty awesome, and reflects one of the better parts of the R language, namely the meta programming that is a holdover from Scheme’s influence on R.
Now, if you don’t already know Python and don’t have some other reason (such as specific deployment considerations or a team of Python collaborators) to learn? I don’t think so. Python is a fine language, just as R is a fine language. You’re already getting things done in R.
If you want a mental challenge, or to get in on the ground floor of something that might be the future, learn Julia, or F#, or (my favorite) Racket. Or heck, learn Spark, or a new modeling method.
Pandas' syntax and conventions are significantly more cumbersome than R, but it does pretty well given the Python syntax and convention that it has to work with. I haven't done a lot with pandas because of how difficult it is to remember the syntax and API, but I feel it's good enough that if you're already a Python user, you can stick to doing your data work in pandas rather than move over to R.
I haven't used tidyverse myself, but I know that pandas is heavily influenced and inspired by R. Most analysis tasks are doable in both platforms. If later stages of your pipeline involve deep learning (or machine learning, generally), then it could pay to be in the python universe given the wide adoption of python ML/DL tools. I generally wouldn't advise switching unless you have a certain pain point, though.
I use both: Python/Pandas for working with production code and pipelining TensorFlow/Keras code, and R/tidyverse/ggplot2 for ad hoc data reports and visualizations. They both have their advantages and disadvantages and it doesn't hurt to know both workflows.
I find pandas far easier to actually program with, whereas the tidyverse is better for quick one-off scripts. The tidyverse and its obsession with non-standard evaluation, makes writing functions more difficult than it should be, and readability goes out the window when using tidyeval.
Native doesn't necessarily mean it's the best option. (tidyverse/dplyr leverages Rcpp for data transformation, which makes it a lot faster at common ETL tasks)
Can we stop with argumentative and ultimately pointless comparison between the US and China.
For me what's astounding is:
"Lastly, nothing is transmitted from the individuals device to the receiving server over HTTPS — all in plaintext via HTTP — and updates are unsigned.
This means all the data the app collects is transmitted to the unknown entity on the receiving end in a way that allows someone with a trivial amount of technical knowledge to intercept and potentially manipulate" [0]
Is there any reason besides incompetence why the apps developers would do this?
It could be that further up the network they are dropping HTTPS packets, or that they plan to in future. It isn't unheard of to simply deny encrypted protocols at the ISP level for a period of time and I could see China doing this in some areas while simultaneously forcing common sites and apps to have functional unencrypted versions to minimise commercial disruption.
The EU found a way around that with "content filters" - basically anything you upload will be sent to a government controlled body for inspection. This works fine with encryption and there is no need to ban math.
Is there any good reason why they wouldn’t do this? All the traffic is going over networks under control of their government. If some lone wolf spies on a few people or owns their phones, it doesn’t really matter to the developers.
I'm guessing that when you start snooping on the everyday mobile activity of 1.3 billion citizens you hit the kind of scaling problems that usually only Facebook and Google see.
TLS isn't the only option, though. You could use TLS on setup to share a pre-computed secret between the device and the remote server, then bin the TLS connection. After that, encrypt and forward over HTTP.
>Is there any reason besides incompetence why the apps developers would do this?
Well... cheap shot maybe, but it's Android. People are always hating on Apple for having security checks and rules. Android, on the other hand... how did Sundar Pichai put it? "We prioritize openness over security," something like that.
Openness does sound good but positioning it as a tradeoff with security bothers me. Having both would be good.
I'm wondering how this is or will be handled on the Apple platform. When that information comes out, I'm not expecting it will make Apple look good, since they have said they will follow the law (no matter how bad the law is!) wherever they sell their devices. If following the law means allowing a spyware app into the App Store, and they do this, I'll have to reevaluate my expectations of privacy for using Apple devices.
Yes. I can write and install any shitty program I want on my Apple device. No problems there.
But when it comes to other people's devices, those other people probably want a say in who the device is open to and when, and for what purpose. Apple helps make it possible for them to have a say.
While I am free to install astoundingly shitty software on my own iPhone/iPad/Mac, Apple makes it difficult for me to install shitty programs on other people's Apple devices without their knowledge or consent.
Seems like a reasonable way of doing things. Open for your own device, and others get to decide for themselves what they are open to for their devices.
How are you free to install software on your own iPhone or iPad when you need a developer account to get a signing certificate to install your app on your own phone?
I would prefer not to say as, after some difficulty, I was able to reach someone at Google, provide necessary details and get approved to resubmit -- but the app name is now locked so I need a new one
I wouldn’t say very. Didn’t Fortnight bypass the play store by using a direct/side-load install? Those things can only be done with design level decisions being made in a product.
Definitely, I meant that they were only able to circumvent the Play store because of the settings/admin/root access etc intentionally left open by the core product team.
To clarify, the article doesn't mention that they were stopping iPhone users to install the app, only Android. I'm not too familiar with the method/tech though. If by design, Android had a more closed ecosystem, they couldn't force it so casually. I'm personally not a fan of that approach, but could see the benefits when under this type of government.
> Yeah, let's pretend there's no point in opposing an authoritarian surveillance state and simultaneously express dismay that this invasive software is poorly designed.
Are you describing China or America? Maybe Russia?
Tech giants must pay for work of artists and journalists which they use
Small and micro platforms excluded from directive’s scope
Hyperlinks, “accompanied by “individual words” can be shared freely
Journalists must get a share of any copyright-related remuneration obtained by their publishing house
For Chinese hanzi, some people also use a stroke input method. You are presented with ~10 possible strokes that make up all hanzi, and by selecting them in the correct order you can write a character.
correct, that's 'WuBi' stroke input method. for a trained typist, stoke input is much faster than latin-letter based input method such as 'pinyin' since chinese character is structure-based.
I don't know Chinese but it seems like more difficult method because you have to remember how the character is written instead of just typing the spelling and choosing from a list.
You need to know how the character is written regardless because the stroke order is part of the character. There are some basic rules like working left to right and top to bottom. Also, each component has the same order when written out.
I also seem to recall there's been successful input system like this for Japanese, in particular for handhelds with pen input (think psion and similar early devices).
Optical recognition of Kanji can be though, but with stroke direction it is easier.
I work as a consultant and I find that for “problem solving” in person communication with colleagues and clients is fundamental.
When I’m working on a model I just put my headphones and I know people will disturb me only if they really need to. Which is fine, I’m here to help in the first place.
